ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 469 



puppies not many days since. Other scrapings of the sand, which always lay 

 close to the marks of the fore-paws, indicated that she had very long ears ; and, 

 as the imprint of one foot was always fainter than those of the other three, I 

 judged that the lady dog of our august queen was, if I may venture to say so, 

 a little lame. 



" With respect to the horse of the King of kings, permit me to observe that, 

 wandering through the paths which traverse the wood, I noticed the marks of 

 horseshoes. They were all equidistant. ' Ah ! ' said I, ' this is a famous galloper.' 

 In a narrow alley, only seven feet wide, the dust upon the trunks of the trees 

 was a little disturbed at three feet and a half from the middle of the path. 

 ' This horse,' said I to myself, ' had a tail three feet and a half long, and, lashing 

 it from one side to the other, he has swept away the dust.' Branches of trees met 

 overhead at the height of five feet, and under them I saw newly fallen leaves ; 

 so I knew the horse had brushed some of the branches and was therefore five 

 feet high. As to his bit, it must have been made of twenty-three carat gold, 

 for he had rubbed it against a stone, which turned out to be a touchstone, with 

 the properties of which I am familiar by experiment. Lastly, by the marks 

 which his shoes left upon pebbles of another kind, I was led to think that his 

 shoes were of fine silver." 



All the judges admired Zadig's profound and subtile discernment; and the 

 fame of it reached even the king and the queen. From the anterooms to the 

 presence-chamber, Zadig's name was in everybody's mouth ; and, although many 

 of the magi were of the opinion that he ought to be burned as a sorcerer, the 

 king commanded that the four hundred ounces of gold which he had been fined 

 should be restored to him. So the officers of the court went in state with the 

 four hundred ounces; only they retained three hundred and ninety-eight for 

 legal expenses, and their servants expected fees. 



Those who are interested in learning more of the fateful history of 

 Zadig must turn to the original ; we are dealing with him only as a 

 philosopher, and this brief excerpt suffices for the exemplification of 

 the nature of his conclusions and of the method by which he arrived 

 at them. 



These conclusions may be said to be of the nature of retrospective 

 prophecies ; though it is perhaps a little hazardous to employ phrase- 

 ology which perilously suggests a contradiction in terms the word 

 " prophecy " being so constantly, in ordinary use, restricted to " fore- 

 telling." Strictly, however, the term prophecy as much applies to 

 outspeaking as to foretelling ; and, even in the restricted sense of 

 " divination," it is obvious that the essence of the prophetic operation 

 does not lie in its backward or forward relation to the course of time, 

 but in the fact that it is the apprehension of that which lies out of 

 the sphere of immediate knowledge ; the seeing of that which to the 

 natural sense of the seer is invisible. 



The foreteller asserts that, at some future time, a properly situated 

 observer will witness certain events ; the clairvoyant declares that, at 

 this present time, certain things are to be witnessed a thousand miles 

 away ; the retrospective prophet (would that there were such a word 

 as "backteller" !) affirms that, so many hours or years ago, such and 



